SFLS #31 Report - Chow Dinner at Lily's House in Lafayette

For #31 in the San Francisco Lunch Series, 20 hounds made a field trip to Lafayette to celebrate the winter solstice at Lily's House. I'll lead off with a few comments and ask my co-celebrants to post their opinions here.

This time the food was even better than my first visit and well worth the drive in the rain. Yet, I believe my lasting memory of the evening will be seeing the broad smile of our chef and his obvious pleasure at cooking for our big group. During our time there, a handful of customers passed through one-by-one to pick up take-out orders, and there might have been a couple other diners sitting down for a quick meal. I couldn't help but think that a chef of his caliber gets bored in that daily grind.

We started with a round of cold dishes, all of which are available from the Chinese language menu. A couple of them are included on the English menu as well. The cold dishes were:Veggie duckKaufuWhole shrimp sauteed in shellCold tofu with preserved eggSoybeans with black pickled snow cabbageChicken with wine sauceTea smoked fishJellyfish

Our main dishes included some things that required advance order either due to the preparation needed or to acquire ingredients not used daily. These were:Beggar's chickenRed-cooked pork trotter (tipang)Pork kidneys with shrimpPork tendon with shrimp roe

When I first saw the bill, I burst out laughing. Peter Yee, sitting next to me, asked if this was hysteria from an outrageously high cost or disbelief that it was so cheap. It was the latter, ridiculously low. The total for this dinner to feed 20 people, tax, and $28 corkage for 4 bottles of wine was $415. We ante'd up $500 in cash, and looking back on it that was still too little.

Gail Simmons gives us her list of pantry must-haves. Ingredients you should always have around to enhance and boost the flavor of all your meals. It's the little things that keep life interesting. Read more here.

Chefs Joanne Chang and Karen Akunowicz from Myers + Chang in Boston, show us how to use lemongrass. It's the central ingredient in their Green Monster, infusing the stir-fry with unique bright, citrusy, and floral-herbal fragrance. Read more.